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Children’s learning, development and well-being are directly influenced by their daily interactions with other children, adults, their families and the environment. This interactive process is known as 'process quality', and leads to a key question – which policies set the best conditions for children to experience high-quality interactions in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings? This report discusses five main policy levers and their effect on process quality, focusing particularly on curriculum and pedagogy, and workforce development. It presents indicators covering 26 countries and jurisdictions, 56 different curriculum frameworks, and more than 120 different types of ECEC settings.

The first five years of a child’s life is a period of great opportunity, and risk. The cognitive and social-emotional skills that children develop in these early years have long-lasting impacts on their later outcomes throughout schooling and adulthood. This report sets out the findings from the International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study in Estonia. The study assesses children’s skills across both cognitive and social-emotional development, and how these relate to children’s early learning experiences at home and in early childhood education and care. It is enriched by contextual and assessment information from the children’s parents and educators. It provides comparative data on children’s early skills with children from England and the United States, who also participated in the study, to better identify factors that promote or hinder children’s early learning.

The first five years of a child’s life is a period of great opportunity, and risk. The cognitive and social-emotional skills that children develop in these early years have long-lasting impacts on their later outcomes throughout schooling and adulthood. The International Early Learning and Child Well-Being Study was designed to help countries assess their children’s skills and development, to understand how these relate to children’s early learning experiences and well-being. The study provides countries with comparative data on children’s early skills to assist countries to better identify factors that promote or hinder children’s early learning. Three countries participated in this study in 2018: England (United Kingdom), Estonia and the United States. The study directly assessed the emergent literacy and numeracy, self-regulation and social-emotional skills of a representative sample of five-year-old children in registered school and ECEC settings in each participating country. It also collected contextual and assessment information from the children’s parents and teachers. This report sets out the findings from the study as a whole.

The first five years of a child’s life is a period of great opportunity, and risk. The cognitive and social-emotional skills that children develop in these early years have long-lasting impacts on their later outcomes throughout schooling and adulthood. This report sets out the findings from the International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study in England. The study assesses children’s skills across both cognitive and social-emotional development, and how these relate to children’s early learning experiences at home and in early childhood education and care. It is enriched by contextual and assessment information from the children’s parents and educators. It provides comparative data on children’s early skills with children from Estonia and the United States, who also participated in the study, to better identify factors that promote or hinder children’s early learning.

The first five years of a child’s life is a period of great opportunity, and risk. The cognitive and social-emotional skills that children develop in these early years have long-lasting impacts on their later outcomes throughout schooling and adulthood. This report sets out the findings from the International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study in the United States. The study assesses children’s skills across both cognitive and social-emotional development, and how these relate to children’s early learning experiences at home and in early childhood education and care. It is enriched by contextual and assessment information from the children’s parents and educators. It provides comparative data on children’s early skills with children from England and Estonia, who also participated in the study, to better identify factors that promote or hinder children’s early learning.

For most children, early childhood education and care (ECEC) provides the first experience of life in a group away from their families. This experience plays a crucial role in children’s learning, development and well-being. The benefits of high-quality ECEC are not restricted to children’s first years of life. However, little is known about this first experience. What do children learn and do in ECEC settings? With which staff do children interact at their centres? Do all children face the same opportunities to enrol in high-quality settings? What are the main spending priorities to raise the quality of ECEC? These are key questions for parents, staff and policy makers. The OECD Starting Strong Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS Starting Strong) is the first international survey that focuses on the ECEC workforce. It offers an opportunity to learn about the characteristics of the workforce, the practices they use with children, their beliefs about children’s development and their views on the profession and on the sector. This first volume of findings, Providing Quality Early Childhood Education and Care, examines multiple factors that can affect the quality of ECEC and thereby can influence children’s learning, development and well-being.

Norway is committed to a high quality and equitable education system, as demonstrated by its high level of public expenditure on education and the dynamic policy activity targeting education quality. Despite progress made in enhancing average student performance in recent years, there still are significant differences between schools in municipalities and between municipalities and regions. In response, Norway has started to implement the new competence development model that sets out to develop teacher professionalism with in-service professional development. With this new policy, the Government of Norway aims to provide municipalities and schools with greater freedom of action and empower them to carry out systematic school improvements at the local level. This decentralised approach would respond to local context and the diversity of needs between Norwegian schools. This report aims to support Norway in this effort, analysing the features of the new model, the engagement of the different stakeholders and the policy context for its introduction. Building on the OECD implementation framework, the report proposes concrete actions to adapt the implementation strategy for impact. The report will be valuable not only for Norway, but also to the many countries that are looking to promote school-based professional development and bridge the gap between policy design and effective implementation.